Pilgrim Ways

In Fife, the pilgrim will want to visit St.Andrews (see Chapter 8, Our Lady of Haddington and St.Andrews) and Dunfermline, which was home to Saint Margaret. Her greatest memorial, Dunfermline Abbey, was built in the eleventh century. A descendant of King Alfred the Great and brought up in Hungary, Margaret married Malcolm Canmore (who defeated Macbeth) and dedicated her life to drawing together the Celtic tradition of Scottish Christianity and Roman Catholicism. Queen Margaret and her children encouraged Benedictine and Cistercian foundations and granted them land on which to develop their monasteries. At Edinburgh Castle the chapel of St.Margaret is eleventh-century and named after the Scottish Queen. Twenty one miles away, in Stirling, one-time capital of Scotland, lies a church established by St.Ninian. The Monymusk reliquary, which held the remains of St.Columba, was kept here.

As the pilgrim travels on towards Lindisfarne, there are opportunities to travel to Haddington (see Chapter 8), to see some of the Scottish holy wells (see chapter 5, Holy Wells), and the remains of Melrose Abbey, where St.Cuthbert was first a monk (see below). From Berwickupon-Tweed it is ten miles to Holy Island and a beautiful walk for those who are so inclined.

Lindisfarne Celtic Christianity was entirely monastic and Iona and Lindisfarne both represent the Celtic love of seclusion and solitude. Lindisfarne is a crescent-shaped spike of land whose sand dunes are linked to the mainland by a causeway twice a day at low tide. I first visited the island at the suggestion of the local Member of Parliament for Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Alan Beith. Berwick lies about eight miles to the north and Bamburgh Castle is about the same distance to the south. St.Aidan organised his work around the ebb and flow of Lindisfarne‟s tides, going out to Oswald‟s people to evangelise, to teach and then return to his fastness to pray. In his long narrative poem, Marmion, Sir Walter Scott creates the impression of an idyllic life. The rugged realities were very different: “For, with the flow and ebb its stile Varies from continent to isle; Dry-shod, o‟er sands, twice every day, The pilgrims to the shrine find way: Twice every day, the waves efface Of staves and sandled feet the trace.

Aidan and his followers lived simply and placed poverty above worldly success. Their mission attracted such numbers of followers that St.Aidan retreated to the nearby Farne Islands, where he could only be reached by boat. St.Bede described Farne as “cut off from the landward side by very deep water and facing, on the other side, out towards the limitless ocean. The island was haunted by devils.”

Cardinal Hume wrote that Aidan‟s spiritual energy was directed towards saving souls, towards helping people understand the great richness of life with God in their lives here on earth as well as in heaven. Aidan began a school at Lindisfarne, where he educated twelve young Anglo-Saxon boys to train for the priesthood. Among them were the future St.Eata, who would become fifth Bishop of Lindisfarne, St.Cedd, who evangelised the East Saxons (and founded Lastingham Abbey, East Yorkshire); and St.Chad, who became Bishop of Mercia (and consecrated the cathedral at Lichfield in 700).